Naked As We Came
by beautiful.mind-broken.body
Summary: We must embrace pain, and burn is as fuel for our journey." When Ponyboy loses the gang and his family, he seeks solace in a pair that will change his life forever.
1. Chapter 1

_Please keep an open mind when reading this…_

Pony placed a booted foot on the front step of his house. He looked dubiously at the flickering porch light, trying to remember if he'd left the damn thing on when he'd taken off for Buck's a good two weeks ago.A brief wave of concern washed over him as he wondered what the electric bill would look like after the light having been left on for so long. He pushed the splinter of apprehension back down as he remembered that he'd quit trying to keep up with the electric bill a long time ago. Worrying about it wouldn't make the charges suddenly evaporate.

He climbed the steps to the porch, trying not to remember the time when the house had always been filled with people, laugher, chocolate cake and card games. He resolved not to notice how much he'd let the place go as he fished around under the doormat for the key to the front door, which was now always locked.

He kept himself oblivious to what was behind the door as well. He didn't have to look to know what was there; the couch that sagged with depression and the permanent slope in the cushions from having seven teenaged boys constantly occupying it, the coffee table that had held enough feet and drinks that there were stains from both, and the empty spaces that had once been filled with shouting, laughing, and cursing from the gang.

The gang was long gone though.

After Johnny and Dallas had died things just hadn't been the same. Their deaths had changed the boys, somehow; made them all a bit more cynical. It only took a year for everything they knew to fall apart.

Soda and Steve had done the unthinkable: enlisted in the army and taken off for Vietnam. Ponyboy had refused to write his brother, or even so much as look at any of the stacks of letters Darry had received from him. To him, Soda enlisting was as good as him just up and abandoning him. That was something they'd solemnly sworn never to do.

Steve was only overseas for two months before he was gunned down by a Vietcong Guerilla in some godforsaken jungle. The remaining boys had learned this by a tear-stained letter Sodapop had written to Darry. By that time it was too late for them to attend the funeral. The Randles hadn't thought to let Steve's friends know of his death.

Somewhere along the lines Two-Bit had virtually crawled into a bottle of whiskey. No one saw much of him anymore; except for the occasional night when he would drag his unkempt self out to Buck's for a few rounds. Even then, he sat alone, he drank alone and he went home alone.

After everything he'd known had fallen apart, Ponyboy had taken to spending a lot of time with Curly Sheppard and his gang of brutes. Tim had gotten himself locked up for quite some time, which left a new pecking order and Curly was at the top. Ponyboy felt safer, somehow, when he was with Curly or at Buck's than he did in his own house and had quickly managed to make himself indispensable to Curly. He felt like he was somehow closer to Dallas in some strange respect.

Pony finally found the key and opened the front door, letting it slap shut behind him. Shrugging out of his jacket, he tossed a sideways glance at two haphazardly kicked off shoes beside the arm chair. He tried to will himself to remember who shoes those even belonged to but it was too hard to piece together anything logical. He felt foggy and slow and thick, still being a big hung-over from the night before.

For a brief instant, he though of Soda who would always kick his shoes off in the same place. He had to remind himself that Soda was long gone too; probably pushing up daisies in a pair of combat boots he could never kick off. American troops had been pulled out of Vietnam two years before, but Soda had never come back. No one had heard so much as a word about him or where he might be, but Ponyboy had been developing his suspicions for quite some time, considering that he'd abruptly stopped sending letters a few years back. Pony had all but chalked him up as dead at this point--just like everyone else.

Pony ran his hands through his hair and cringed. His neck and ears itched and he suddenly realized how long it had been since he'd had a good hot shower. He kicked the door to the bathroom open--deftly avoiding seeing himself in the mirror--and turned on the faucet. He hoped foolishly for hot water but remembered all too quickly that he hadn't been paying the heating bill and settled for the icy blast that shot out from the shower head. It was better than nothing.

Pony suddenly remembered stupidly spending hours in that bathroom trying to comb his hair in a way that would make him look more like Sodapop. He fought back the urge to smash his fist into the medicine cabinet, trying not to imagine how satisfying the glass shattering would sound. Lately, it was getting harder and harder for him to control this newfound rage that had seemed to replace the aching sorrow he'd felt deep in his chest for so long.

A creak on the ancient floorboards behind him made him spin around, his hand instinctively reaching for the switchblade in his back pocket.

"Take it easy, Pony." The familiar voice startled him so much that his knife clattered to the floor.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ponyboy spat snatching his blade up off the floor, embarrassed that he'd let his guard down, if only for a moment.

"_You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You watch out for yourself, and nothing can touch you man," _Dally's words still echoed in his ears. He quickly pulled himself back together, letting his eyes slowly--deliberately--roam up the figure in the hall.

He should have known. If the porch light being on hadn't tipped him off, the shoes in the living room should have. Sodapop was back.

"Well, I used to live here at one time," Soda drawled, giving his brother a half-smile, as if testing the waters between them.

Pony scoffed at the man standing before him. He looked exactly the same as he had when he left. Looking in his eyes though, Pony could tell that he'd seen a lot--really experienced the world in a way that Pony never had. For a moment he was wildly jealous that Soda had gotten out, even if it was to go gun down a bunch of gooks.

"Not for the past four years, you haven't," he spat at Soda, whose eyes suddenly darkened. "They pulled everyone out of Nam two years ago, Sodapop. I took you for dead, you know? Where the fuck have you been?"

Soda didn't make a sound. Ponyboy seethed with anger as he realized that Soda hadn't give one ounce of thought to what he'd say if he was greeted with this blatant hostility instead of the warm welcome he'd so clearly been expecting. Pony stared, pitilessly, as his brother struggled to come up with some sort of explanation. For one brief moment he caught sight of himself in the mirror and had to fight back another urge to put his fist through the glass. The detached, composed mask had been stripped from his face and replaced with a cool, hard knock-off of Dallas Winston's.

"When I stopped getting your letters," Soda started softly, "I just figured I wasn't wanted around here anymore."

Pony rolled his eyes indifferently. There was a time when seeing Sodapop acting so timid would have devastated him, but he didn't have time for that childish nonsense these days. "I never sent you any letters in the first place."

Soda looked confused, then pulled his wallet out from his back pocket. He fished around inside of it for a minute, coming out with a worn envelope, yellowed with age.

"This was the very first letter I got from you." He offered it to Pony. Ponyboy instantly recognized the writing on the envelope as belonging to Darry. Only Sodapop would be fooled so easily by such a diluted plot.

"Must have been Darry." Pony shook his head refusing to take the letter. "I didn't send you shit."

Soda bit his bottom lip and nodded his head, visibly trying to make sense of this. Ponyboy set his jaw, intent on proving that he wasn't the same fifteen-year-old kid Soda had left behind. Didn't he understand that adopting this new persona was his only choice?

"Okay, so you're still mad at me. I get it," Soda finally said, dropping his arms and turning to leave to bathroom. Apparently, he wasn't up for an all out brawl just then. "I guess I'll just go wait in the living room until Darry gets home."

A sharp stab ripped through Ponyboy's chest for a split second.

"You're gonna be waiting for an awful long time," he spat at the back of Soda's head. "Darry's gone."

Soda froze. "What do you mean?" he asked without turning around.

"You get dumber since you left or something?" Pony asked coldly, shouldering past him--desperate to hurt Soda in any way that he could. "The guy's dead. He's never coming back."

_BIG thanks to fanfar3 for putting up with my horrific grammar, helping me polish this up and encouraging me to continue with chapter 2. -Hannah_


	2. Chapter 2

_Reposted for the fourth time, thanks to corrections made my Jenny, who kindly pointed out:  
_

_"I didn't do this for you, I did this so peoples' eyes won't melt from their  
skull, because of your atrociously lacking grammatical talents."_

"Would you just stop for a second?" Soda pleaded as Pony shoved clothes into a beat up old duffle. "What happened to Darry?"

Pony shook him off, though, and kept rummaging through his drawers in the hopes of at least finding something clean to take with him when he left. He had to get out of that house. With Soda there, it was impossible to keep his mind clear of all those haunting memories. He was flooded with the emotions that he'd worked so damn hard to ignore.

Ponyboy was shocked to discover it wasn't grief that overwhelmed him, but a devastating fusion of hatred and anger. It escaped from some dormant place in his chest, coursing, and pulsed through every fiber of his body. He struggled to keep himself from wheeling around and knocking the daylights out of Soda. His hands shook as he tried desperately to maintain the bitterly detached façade he'd created for himself.

"What happened to you?" Soda finally screamed, clutching at fistfuls of his shirt. "Why won't you talk to me?"

"Why should I?" Pony growled, meeting Soda's eyes. He tried not to remember when Soda meant everything to him. He tried not to think about what it had done to him--to everyone--when Soda'd left. He refused to remember how much it hurt when he hadn't come home after the war, or the vivid nightmares of Soda's death he'd endured for months on end.

When Soda faltered, trying to come up with a reason to get Pony to talk to him, Pony seized his opportunity to make a move for the door. In a flash, he found his face mashed up against a t-shirt as Soda whipped him around by one arm, and tackled him to the ground. The pair struggled for a moment, but Soda quickly had Pony's skeletal arms pinned to the floor above his head.

"Get off of me!" Pony seethed, struggling to get out of the iron grip, but Soda overpowered him without much effort. Those years in the army had paid off in at least one way. "Let go now, or I swear I'll…"

Pony left his threat unfinished, but Soda held fast. "Just talk to me, goddamnit!" he commanded. "Tell me what the hell happened!"

"Soda!" Pony howled, his voice catching in his throat. He could hardly stand to be touched anymore, let alone held like this by the person who had caused him to become this way; It was almost unbearable.

"Just talk to me, Ponyboy," Soda repeated, his voice suddenly calm;mellifluously smooth and mellow. Pony panicked, afraid that he'd go to  
pieces if he didn't regain some distance from his brother. Distance always gave him the upper hand.

"Fine," he gasped, frantically trying to rip his arms out of Soda's vice-like hold. Talking to the guy was better than being crushed to death, he  
reasoned. Soda finally released him. He rolled away hastily, relieved to have regained some comfortable distance.

"Well?" Soda prodded gently. "What was it?"

"Fell off a roof," he divulged unceremoniously. He glanced up to take in Soda's reaction, but there was none--just a vacant expression in his eyes.

Pony grit his teeth and hauled himself to his feet. "He was hauling three bundles of roofing up a ladder when it happened," he continued, searching for some sort of response.

"Three?" Soda finally repeated numbly. "He knew better than that."

Pony snorted. "You didn't leave him much of an option, G.I. Joe," he spat. "When you left, there was no way to make ends meet. Darry was trying to get as much roofing done as he could while the sun was still up, and moonlighting at McGarvey's Tavern afterwards. He was run down."

Soda sat back on his heels, his eyes fixed on the floor. Watching him, Ponyboy felt like his heart was going to jump straight out of his chest. He  
shifted uncomfortably and tried to clear his throat of the tight feeling that had settled there.

"Look, I gotta get out of here," he mumbled. "Curly's waiting."

Soda looked up slowly. "Curly?" he repeated, looking bewildered, and Pony nodded curtly. "Are you gonna come back Pone?"

For a moment, Ponyboy debated refusing to ever return to him, or the tormenting memories he'd brought with him, but he heard himself speaking before he even realized what he was saying.

"Sure," he promised, kicking open the door. "I'll come back."


	3. Chapter 3

Ponyboy tried to clear his head as he tramped down the street towards Buck's. He kept his pace quick, partly from habit and partly because he knew he'd be an easy target for a brawl. He _had_ to make it to Buck's in one piece; he had to get to Curly and the other guys. He knew that things would start to make sense again once he was with Curly in the solace of the ramshackle bar that he'd grown to know as home.

Buck's had become somewhat of a safe haven for Ponyboy in the past few years. He'd started hanging around the bar ordering Pepsi's--which pissed Buck off to no end--in the hopes of catching up with Two-Bit, who had developed a talent for not returning phone calls. Ponyboy spent many long nights on the torn up red leather barstools, loitering around on the off chance that his one-time friend would appear.

It was there that Ponyboy rediscovered his old pal Curly, fighting to keep his ass on a bar stool and off the floor. Curly had dropped out of school during their junior year, and Ponyboy hadn't seen or heard much from any of the Shepards in a while.

"Curly?" Pony had asked the mop-topped carcass flopped over the bar incredulously. "That you?"

The mess of golden-brown curls bobbed up and down and hollow amber irises took their time roving over Pony's body until they met his own eyes. There was a prompt flicker of recognition in Curly's face. His parched, ashen lips split into a gentle smile which Pony had gauchely returned.

"Tim's around here somewhere," Curly offered, when the pair found themselves in an uncomfortable silence.

Pony nodded and glanced around, but saw no sign of the elder Sheppard. Once again, there was quiet between them.

"Hey, man; I'm sorry to hear about Darry," Curly had finally managed between slugs from his beer bottle. "Tim and I tried to make it to the funeral-"

Pony felt a heavy hand land roughly on his shoulder, then. Tim Sheppard was clapping him on the back and rumpling his hair and agreeing with Curly that it was a terrible thing that happened to Darry.

"Get this kid a drink, would you?" Tim commanded Buck, the same as he commanded attention and respect from everyone else in the room.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" Tim had asked, appearing to be sincerely interested. "Is it just you and Soda staying in that old house now?"

Pony had to swallow a lump in his throat before answering. "Naw," he'd explained, stirring the concoction Buck had brought him with his straw, "Soda never came back from the war."

After hearing that news, Tim had opened a tab and the trio had spent the night drinking and remembering Pony's brothers and the rest of the old gang.

"Yep, those were the days," Tim had sighed, sounding more like an old man than he looked. The light from the rising sun started to show through the blinds by then.

"I better be getting' on home," Pony--who had never had more than a couple beers in his life--slurred and attempted to slide off of his barstool.

Tim had caught him under arms and righted him, laughing a bit at the sight of the youngest Curtis in such a condition. It didn't take much to persuade Pony to spend the night in the room he and Curly shared upstairs.

Within a few weeks, Pony--desperate for any level of amity--had attached himself to Curly. He and Tim, after being kicked out of their mother's house, had gotten into the business of dealing weed to pay for their room at Buck's. Tim would drive out to a connection in Oklahoma City once a week to pick up an ounce of brick weed, which he and Curly would weight out and divide into dime bags, selling them off ten cents at a time.

Business wasn't great, but the pair was making enough money to pay for their room and board. In the meantime, the bills Darry had left behind had been piling up for Pony. Every day the mailbox was about busting with past due notices, stamped with red ink that this was serving as a third or fourth reminder.

He had been doing a bang up job of ignoring the letters, until the phone calls started. Bill collectors had a habit of being brusque and callous when they were trying to get money out of a person. When they started threatening to foreclose on the house, Pony knew he had to do something.

With Tim and Curly being the only friends he had left in town, Pony naturally turned to them. He had come up with a mutually beneficial business proposition for them; a money making scheme that he knew they wouldn't be able to turn down.

_Thanks to la belle nuit for reading this over and encouraging me to put up another chapter. Constructive reviews are always appreciated._ -Hannah


	4. Chapter 4

Ponyboy had never been involved with drugs before--Darry would have killed him. He had paid attention in his economics class, though--enough to understand supply and demand and how to manipulate the market in his favor and maximize his profits.

He'd also overheard enough talk about the subject of selling contraband from the kids at school, and the guys at the DX, and now Tim and Curly, who almost never spoke of much else. He had easily seen that Tim and Curly were making more work for themselves with less revenue than all that trouble was really worth.

Desperate for a way to earn enough money to be able to keep the house, Pony sat down at the deserted kitchen table and crunched numbers and ran over figures again and again until he had come up with a foolproof business strategy to present to Tim and Curly.

"So, you're saying that if we buy more, we sell more?" Curly had asked dimly after Pony had made his proposal.

"And, in turn, make more money," Pony had stressed.

"We've got enough trouble keeping up with the number of folks stopping by here as it is," Tim argued tiredly. "And Buck ain't too thrilled with the foot traffic at all hours of the night."

"So you expand in every way possible. You gotta think bigger than this nickel and dime bullshit," Pony sighed. "You hire people to work under you. You stop driving all the way out to Oklahoma City for the same brick weed that everyone else has and start investing in some quality tree. Bring some class to Tulsa, and you'll have a corner on the market."

Tim thought this over. "Still don't solve the problem with Buck," he pointed out. "He's been breathing down my neck about how inconvenient this is all for him."

"Cut him in," Pony said simply. "If you follow through with everything I've told you, you'll be making more than enough to pay him off for his inconvenience."

Pony smacked the stack of papers with all of his figures on it down in front of Tim as proof that this strategy would work.

Tim and Curly exchanged looks. "What's in it for you?"

Pony bit at his bottom lip. "If I don't start paying the mortgage soon, the bank will foreclose on the house," he told them candidly.

"I see," Tim smirked. "So you're expecting a cut too, then?"

"I was just hoping for a job pushing," Pony confessed, kicking at the ground.

Tim raised an eyebrow at this.

"Obviously you'll be in charge of everything, Tim," Pony said quickly, appealing to Tim's ego. "No one can give an order like you. It'll be easy for you to lead this operation. I just need to make a few bucks on the side."

From the look on his face, Pony was sure that Tim was going to haul off and belt him one. Instead, Tim threw his head back and laughed.

"Somehow, Curtis, I just can't see you dealing," he chuckled. "With your rotten luck, you'll probably get jumped and lose my entire product."

Pony felt his ears turn red. He'd never been much of a fighter, but for Tim to point that out was mortifying.

"The way I see it, you'd be more of a help running numbers, collecting money--you know, that intellectual junk," Tim mused, shoving the stack of papers Pony had presented him with back into his arms. Pony frowned at that.

"Don't sweat it, kid," Tim grinned. "If we're gonna be making as much money as you claim, I'll take care of those mortgage payments."

Pony shouldn't have expected Tim to just go along with his plan. He should have known that Tim would exercise some sort of control over this scheme. At that point, though, he didn't mind taking a backseat to Tim if it meant he'd be taking money in.

Now, the only thing left to do to get their brainchild off the ground was to assemble the perfect battalion. Pony had no idea where to round up such people, but Tim and Curly knew of several lost souls in need of a few bucks.


End file.
